I was walking to the local library and stopped to take some photos of a group of 3 houses that will be demolished to make way for a group of 15 expensive 2-storey townhouses. An older woman walking past with her dog asked me what I was doing and I said I was taking photos before the houses disappeared. We then got into a conversation (well, she did most of the talking!) about the development which the local residents had strongly objected to as it would erode the amenity of the street and cause horrendous traffic problems. There is a tall oak tree that will inevitably be felled, and all the vegetation will be cleared too.
The local council made an amendment to put the properties “within the Bentleigh Urban Village area, namely within a new ‘Higher-Density Residential’ Precinct, east of Arthur Street which essentially encourages higher-density residential development”. The residents’ objections were overridden by the ogres at VCAT. So there is someone else who feels the same way I do about all the overdevelopment in my suburb. As she remarked, the suburb will become a slum in the future with all this overcrowding.
The root cause of all this is population growth, but State and Federal governments are obsessed with promoting this because it’s “good for the economy”, never mind the impact it has on living conditions.
